


Ectoplasm Pie

by SunlitDarkness



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: AND HERE WE GO, Canon Related, Chocoplasm, Emotional Manipulation, I don't know what to tell y'all, Leo Ramirez, Subtle Racism, but not horror, ghost hunger, i'm trash, suicidal messages
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2018-12-15 01:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11795700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunlitDarkness/pseuds/SunlitDarkness
Summary: Chocoplasm Pie.Now being served at the Nasty Burger for the foreseeable future.





	1. Once a Human Being

**Author's Note:**

> This is my work crossposted from .net.
> 
> I have no update schedule to promise.  
> I have no plot to promise.  
> This is mostly just gonna be drabbles and scraps of this idea that I had one day and introduced to my friends and now it's here.

Leo pulled up a grainy video feed that he'd taken from the Nasty Burger security and fast forwarded through the blandness of the day. He paused at Valerie cutting a direct line into the camera's blind spot, inspected it with intrigue, and identified the exact moment when an ectoplasm stained ghost showed up. Leo double checked the lock on his door and readjusted the web camera. He hit record.

"Will you take a look at that? Pretty pathetic, huh?" Leo drawled as the ghost floated in a circle. "Well you'll never believe this," he muttered as the spectre looked down at its tail and screamed silently on the screen, " but that ghost you're looking at was once a human being. And not just any human being, that kid was a scientist. A smart, acne-ridden ball of assholery." The ghost leaned against the wall only to turn intangible and fall backwards through it. Leo paused the video and started up the webcam.

"This is his story." Leo pointed emphatically at the screen. "Well, actually, my story," his words kept coming faster and faster, "that's right-I'm that ghost. The name is Leo," he took a breath. "Leo Ramirez."

"I was Amity's science guy, and I ruined my life for no-uh well, reasons. Not that hard to believe," Leo shrugged. "Look, I'll tell you what: you go back a ways, you know, before I was a ghost and this will all make sense."

Leo turned the recording back on his computer screen. He idly clicked through the pictures and pulled one up to full-size. "Dammit, now see, this is a little too far back. Oh! Look at me, that's me as a baby." With a tight smile, he clicked the next one over. A kid with a mop of fluffy dark hair grinned up at the camera from inside a box. "Er, ha. Let's move ahead."

Leo faced the webcam, addressing his future audience. "Okay, this is the real me. Not this." Two rings of light swept over him, leaving behind sickly slate grey skin and ephemeral hair. In place of his legs, there was a spectral tail. Leo could catch a glint of green from his eyes in the lens of the camera.

"This," Leo pulled the transformation to show his true face, "Not this," He waved his hand in the general vicinity of the rest of him.

"Winner." Leo quirked a human smile, though it didn't quite reach his brown eyes before he let the transformation settle as ghost. "Loser," his voice broke. Leo turned off the webcam and saved the raw footage to an encrypted folder.

He forced the transformation back to human and curled up in his bed. Lights flashed behind his eyes, and his dreams were haunted by a face streaked with ectoplasm and a wound that weeped and refused to close.

Leo set the video recorder in the antigravity, tethering it to a doorframe. He grinned. "Okay, see the Ghost Zone? Nobody in it pays attention to me. Check this out." Leo cupped his hands around his mouth, "Technus!?" A couple of the skeletons on the a drifting island tipped their skulls in his direction. The scientist's door remained firmly closed. He knocked, and the sound echoed despite the door remaining closed.

Leo shrugged at the camera. He raised his hands in a _what can you do?_ gesture and twisted around when a door farther down opened. "Hi, Box Ghost."

The other ghost glanced furtively at Leo.

"Beware!" It's shriller than a man of his stature should sound. But Leo nodded and grinned while the Box Ghost frowned and darted back into his door with a _CLICK!_

Leo frowns and picks his video camera back up. There's the roar of something large, but that's hardly unusual in the Ghost Zone. Leo let himself drift, following an internal call to some other area. It crossed his mind to turn off the recording, but if he's taking the journal viewers on a tour, why not leave it on? He could always edit it out later.

There's a gust of motion-Leo's almost pulled along in the current of the ghost that zipped past him-headed towards the roaring he heard a little while ago.

_Danny Phantom?_

The other ghost didn't slow, but the white hair and trademark black suit was recognizable. Leo focused his camera on the receding figure.

"And there goes the hero of Amity Park." He turned it back to himself.

"I wonder what that makes me."


	2. Two Roses for Ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't post like, ever.   
> Swearing warning? Is that a thing?

"Why do you have legs as Phantom?"

"Why doesn't the Chocoplasm Ghost have legs?"

Leo blinks and rolls his eyes, "First off, Chocoplasm Ghost isn't my name any more than Inviso-Bil was yours. Second off," he kicks at Danny underneath the library table, "I asked first."

"OW, I'm less dead than you, bitch?"

"That's not measurable. Besides, Inviso-Bil has more aggressive powers than Chocoplasm. Which means you're more ghostly and arguably more dead." Leo rubs at his temples while staring at the biography on the table, pretending to read. This assignment isn't helping his headache. The dry and dusty books call for him to just rest his head and his eyes.

"Pfft, aside from the Wail, Chocoplasm is totally on level with Phantom." Danny made a half-hearted annotation in the margins that looked suspiciously like 'Faulkner needs to shut up.'

Leo stops. "Okay, stop Danny. Don't try to play all sympathetic like your sister does. I can only handle that from one Fenton and only on occasion. It's not funny anymore." He stares at Danny, not threatening, just a heavy look without amusement. Just something a little less human and alive.

"Ramirez, you're a hybrid. You've gotta be tough. What do I have that you don't?" Danny

Leo sits back, ticking off the list on his fingers. "Ghostly wail, Ice powers, Duplication, and the ghost sense mist thing to start with, Fenton. Plus, I don't actually fight ghosts so everything else isn't as developed as yours outside of emotional distress."

"Your powers get weird with your emotions?"

Leo deadpans, "I pinned you and almost blasted your head off the other day because you were harassing Technus and endangering Wes. Pretty sure that all ghosts' powers get weird with emotion. Are you saying that your powers wouldn't amp up if I was raggin' on Tucker and/or Sam?"

"I thought that was what you could normally do."

"Hell no, just shut up and read," Leo snaps his book closed and grabs the next in the stack. Mr. Lancer glances at them for the first time in the period because unlike the Excuses Trio, he actually knows where to sit to be invisible. He settles in for the long game of ignoring Danny while pretending to actually get work done. He knows that focus isn't on his side this time. Within moments, there's a jabbing of the short story packet at his book.

"Can you check that I've got this right?"

"You're not stupid, Fenton; check it against the Sparknotes."

" _Ramirez,_ " Danny hisses.

Sighing through his nose, Leo pulled the papers onto his side of the table without putting down the book. _What can you do then?_ There's a lightning flash of terror for a heartbeat before he remembers that these are personal notes that Lancer's not collecting. Leo uncaps a pen with his teeth and closes the book with his fingers marking his place. _Make people stay away or come and help._

Danny rolls his eyes when he reads the scrawl.

"Like some of your powers aren't lame, snow queen."

Danny shrugged, "Okay, but like the Box Ghost…."

"GENTLEMEN," both teenagers jump at the sudden proximity of Lancer, "I appreciate your _concern_ with Amity's current events, but your pair is _specifically_ addressing Mr. Faulkner's struggles as an author." Danny fumbles for words. _Deer in the headlights._

"Er well, he grew up in the South and had romance struggles. But he listened to other people telling stories. And he wrote more experimentally during the same time as Hemmingway," Danny slows into a rambling explanation that flows with his thoughts. "Who kinda took writing into the _write with less words way_ , which _had_ to be annoying because Faulkner's just trying to do his thing and have people listen to the stories he's telling. But like, he also got a lot of awards for his writing and people still like it. And he writes the South pretty well for how he saw it, I think."

Lancer nods and turns to Leo. "And your thoughts on Faulkner, Mr. Ramirez?"

"He's a creep who wrote cringy, triggering things and some people rightfully objected. And I don't like him." The words are dry and sharp.

Lancer's eyebrows inch closer to the smooth crest of his head. "I can't tell you to like or not like any given literature, Mr. Ramirez. But for your other positions, do you have evidence?"

Leo reached over to Danny's packet and flipped it back to the front page. " _A Rose for Emily_ is about necrophilia, Mr. Lancer. She falls in love with a dude, kills him, and sleeps by his corpse every night. That's creepy." There's a snort/choking noise, and in the corner of his vision, Danny can see Wes Weston's eyes bugging out. "And on top of that, the town HAD to know that something was up but they just made her house not stink. And the town _romanticized her_."

Smiling, Mr. Lancer flips Leo's story packet to another of Faulkner's novellas. "Try this. I think, Mr. Ramirez, that you'll find that one story is hardly the whole of the person's capabilities. Nor is it what should allow you to judge the author so harshly."

The quiet of the library sits more hollowly. Danny doesn't ask about Leo's ghost again.

Leo keeps asking random things about Phantom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just really like Leo.  
> He's the answer to a couple questions I've had regarding the show.  
> Eventually, that will be addressed.  
> Someday I'll have stuff to post, but today is not that day.
> 
> I still cannot promise an update schedule or anything resembling plot.


	3. Implications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leo isn't doing too hot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place before both of the prior chapters!  
> Also specifically for this chapter there's a shit ton of verbal abuse and manipulation and suicidal stuff.

Leo knocks on the closed wooden door. His head registers the dull thunk blearily, and the pastel green note in his hand feebly tethers him to the task at hand. _Go and see the counselor_. Should be easy enough. Leo glances around the corners of the hall; his thoughts cataloguing the differences from two feet back and to the right. Cotton fills his head and it’s a good moment or two before he tunes into the counselor calling his name.  


“Mr. Ramirez? Are you ready?” She smiles tightly at him gestures him into her office. Leo watches himself walk past her and settle into an uncomfortable desk chair. The counselor (she’s new; she has to be.) follows him in and the door _snicks_ shut behind her.  
“Hello Mr. Ramirez,” she peers at him over the top of her glasses. “I’ve heard from some of your teachers that you’re falling behind?”

Leo shakes himself, trying to settle into his body and into the unforgiving plastic just a half an inch more. “I mean, I guess. It doesn’t feel like I am, but,” he scans her face from behind his bangs, “I just, I might?”  


She leans against the empty desk and crosses her ankles. “Well, I’ve heard from several of your teachers that your work has been lacking in it’s usual quality. Which surprises me.”  


“What. Why?”  


“Well,” she drawls, something like a growl in her voice, though surely that’s just his hazy brain. “I’m surprised that they sent you to me without asking you about these discrepancies. I can’t even imagine what their expectations must be for them to choose this route.”  


Leo’s gut drops, and his body fits like a too small glove. “I mean, I’m a pretty good student. I’ve turned most everything in. Like, I mean I’ve always struggled with like, English and History, but. I’ve turned stuff in. I had actually thought that I was doing better.”  


The counselor quirks an eyebrow and scans him dispassionately. “Yes, I suppose that you _would_ struggle with English.” She goes to speak again, but pauses and frowns. “You said you’d been turning stuff in; has it been complete when you’ve done so?”  


“I, well I mean, no.”  


The counselor nods and scribbles some reminder on a sticky pad on the desk. “Would you like to talk about why you haven’t been completing your work, Mr. Ramirez? Has there been any trouble at home?”  


Leo’s mouth dries up like the rocks around the retention pond in his neighborhood. He blinks as the words filter through the mire of his thoughts, the phrases slipping through but the sharp disappointed tone snags and stings. He’d almost prefer Lancer’s passionate flock guilt trips.  


“Trouble? Not really, I don’t think. Like my parents are doing good and we’re not fighting and sure they work a lot, but they’re home for dinner most every night and things are pretty okay I think.”  


The counselor leans forward; glasses practically falling off her face. They mutually decide to not mention how far into his personal space she is. “I’m glad that you have that stability at home. It’s important to have things like that to count on. What careers did you say they have?”  


“They’re scientists, Dr. Spectra.” Despite the truth, his response still withers like ash in his mouth.  


“How fascinating.” Something shifts behind her face. “So it’s not a family stressor that’s part of this right now. Okay.” She does a small half clap, and Leo heaves a sigh when she sits back just a touch more. “What about your friends?”  


Leo snerks and bites back a laugh, “Friends? I have, like two. And I’m dating one of them. I like them though.”  


Spectra nods, vividly red hair swaying with the movement. She’s close enough that Leo can count the grey strands at her temples. His lips twitch in amusement that the red is fake. He wonders if she knows her roots are showing. “That’s nice; can you tell me more about them?”  


Leo shifts in the chair, pulling one of his feet up underneath him. “Er well. So Valerie Gray and Wes Weston? Val’s amazing. She’s my best friend. I’ve known her since I was little. Like little little. Like, her dad and my parents carpooled us to summer camps at the park district. She’s got this science project thing going on for the fair in the spring and she asked me to help her out, cause you know, i love that kinda stuff. But she’s doing a feedback based experiment with how fabric textures and colors affect the perceived quality of the fabric and oh! It’s so cool? Like, I don’t know aNYthing about fashion or fabric, but she explains it really well? And Val, she….oh,” Leo frowns a little bit, “I’m sorry. What was the question again?”  


“I just asked you to tell me about your friends. It sounds like you and Valerie have a lot of history together. Do you still spend time with her?” Dr. Spectra rolls a pen through her fingers, pulling the cap off with her teeth and jotting down a couple notes.  


“Not as much anymore. We have different interests, our names are far apart in the alphabet, and she, she has a lot more friends now,” Leo whispers around the tightness in his throat. His chest pangs, and his eyes water while he tries sharply to count the visible bobby pins. “She’s still my friend though.”  


“Mmmmm,” Spectra nods. “What about your other friend? Wes, you said? What’s he like?”  


“He’s kinda a brat,” Leo laughs wetly. “But he’s sweet? I admire his determination and perception skills, I guess? We watch movies together and he’s really into like literary analysis and shit. He pays attention to that stuff. Like he printed out all the Wikipedia articles about how political Dr. Suess’s stuff is and it was really interesting to hear about? Like we have this independent reading project we’re supposed to be doing for Lancer and he said _specifically_ that Wes and I could do _Green Glass Sea_ and I’m so excited because the Manhattan Project is just one of those things, you know?”  


“He sounds like a pretty good kid. A pretty good friend?”  


The edge of Leo’s mouth twitches. “Boyfriend.”  


“Pardon?”  


“Wes is my boyfriend. I mean yeah, he’s my friend. But like, he’s my boyfriend.”  


“Alright, Mr. Ramirez.” Dr. Spectra sends him a soft smile, and Leo’s hackles raise. “It sounds like your friends are important to you, and that you have good relationships with them. How would you say that they’d talk about you to their other friends?”  


“Wait, what?”  


“How do you think your friends view you?”  


Leo gapes at her. “Well they’re my friends. They care? I guess that’s the word. They’ve stayed. I’m not. I don’t. What you’re wanting me to say still isn’t very clear, Dr. Spectra.”  


“Well,” Dr. Spectra twists around and lifts a file. She wets her fingertips and flips through to a specific set of notes. “You’ve been seeing another therapist for a long time right?” She waits for him to nod. His limbs slowly freeze, and he picks at a thin spot on the knees of his jeans. 

“Do your friends know? What do they think about it?”  


“Oh right, that,” Leo snorts a little. He gives a tight half laugh to try and dislodge the icy discomfort in his chest. “Sure they know. My brain’s hated me for _years_. Ehrm. Sorry,” He flashes a weak smile, “I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression for a long time. It’s not like it’s a big reveal or anything.”  


“Well, no. If your brain hates you, what makes your friends different?”  


“ExcUSE me?” Leo flinches and half shrieks. His thoughts grind to a halt, and he blinks blankly. Alarms sing a low tune in his brain.  


“What makes them different? Tell me why your brain is wrong.” Something half predatory lurks in Dr. Spectra’s words, and Leo scrabbles for the skills he has: the ones he’d **asked** to be taught, but they filter through his mental fingers like grimy water. Insubstantial and gross.  


“Well, I mean, I’m sick. I have depression. I have anxiety.” Leo picks at a purple bandaid around his index finger, staring at the rubber wrapped edge of the desk and fighting down the wet tightness in his throat. “You have my papers right there.”  


Dr. Spectra quirks an eyebrow.  


Leo flinches at the condescension. He opens his mouth to push his point, but the words have dried on his tongue. He tries again and stumbles over the ways to start; his words crawl back down his windpipe and cower deep in his lungs. He squirms under Dr. Spectra’s sharp eyes. There’s a cold hand that wraps around his heart and pulls him into stillness in the chair. It pushes the tight knot even higher in his throat, and Leo clenches his teeth to stop the trembling of his jaw and to keep in check the tears that rise against the sinking in his stomach.  


“You may certainly be sick, Mr. Ramirez. But being sick doesn’t justify not seeking out wellness and recovery.” Dr. Spectra straighten her pose and tugs the cuffs of her suit jacket further down her arms.  


“I _have_!” Leo interjects. “I have. They are right! There!”  


Dr. Spectra shoots him a look. “If you’d let me finish,” she lazily enunciates with a roll of her hand. She pauses, and Leo fights down the irritation that she’s not listening, swallows down the tears that threaten to spill. Everything in his chest is too tight. “You’re sick, yes. But, there are many methods, many paths. You’ve known about this long enough and had a good enough relationship with your parents that you should be coping much better than you are. At this point, Mr. Ramirez, it should be like having a cold or allergies.” Dr. Spectra straightens her pose, shifting to her feet and striding towards him. “This isn’t life-ending. You’re not in any immediate danger, are you?”  


Leo flinches.  


“This isn’t like pnuemonia that drowns you from the inside nor like gangrene that rots your flesh from your bones. You won’t die from this, sweetheart.”  


_But it feels like that._ he wants to say. His breathing is ragged, and he can’t meet the counselor’s gaze. Leo’s heart races in his throat and his teeth are clenched and he’s far too close to crying for any words to be unmangled when he forces them. “And if I do?”  


Dr. Spectra laughs, and it’s a high-pitched grating sound. “Do what? Die from it? Oh honey,” she leans close and squeezes his shoulder. The hairs on the back of Leo’s neck prickle, and he squirms. “Dear, you’ll only die from it if you kill yourself. And even then,” she looks at him over her glasses, and he swears her eyes glow, “it’s just you. You’re the one who can’t cope. You’re the one failing. So it stands to reason that you’ll have been the one to do you in. Not your anxiety, not your depression, not any kind of disease. It’ll have just been you.” She grins and her teeth meet strange. “But you won’t.”  


Leo jerks his head towards her. A thin sound escapes before he chews at the inside of his cheeks; his eyebrows drawing together while he works out his rebuttal.  


“You won’t.” Dr. Spectra’s voice is harder and surer. “You’ll just sit there and brood cause that’s what you teenagers do. You think your pain is unique and that noone understands? NO. It’s just that they don’t care. “ There’s a shark edge in her smile and condescension in her eyes and Leo’s retreating into himself. Wrapping himself up in the milliseconds between his breaths and in the confines of his chest.  


“You think that the cutting on your fingers is unique? That people look at it and don’t know _exactly_ what you’ve been doing? No. You think that your pain is real, but it’s all in your head. Afterall, you should be able to cope? You might be sick, but you shouldn’t always be.”  


His cheeks burn, and the tears bubble and drip. “I’ve been getting better,” he says. It’s high and thin, and Leo can’t swallow down the tightness that chokes off a couple syllables. The words are too few and too frail.  


Dr. Spectra tilts her head just barely, before standing straight and striding over to the door. Her face freezes in that moment when the wearer realies that they’ve been frowning and shouldn’t be anymore.  


“Then get over it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright so I love this OC so very very dearly.  
> I fully intend to continue this.  
> Leo is not in an AU.  
> This is canon adjacent.  
> This is playing with possible stories and plots and characters that fit into canon but are not main characters/plots in canon.  
> I have no promises of updates or schedules.  
> But thanks much for reading!


End file.
